My neighbour is cutting down a tree that is over 100 years old. And besides the fact that I think that it should be a crime to destroy nature like that, by cutting down that tree, they are affecting the design of my garden, the amount of shade that we have and our privacy.

People have had different reactions to my trauma.

They have varied from people being shocked that I should be traumatised by the loss of a tree to people totally over reacting about it.

Believe me, I have been through some terrible traumas in my life and in the greater scheme of things the loss of a tree is minor compared to some of the other things (like guns, robbers and assault) that I have had to deal with.

So what is a trauma and what is not a trauma?

Truthfully there is no such thing as one trauma being worse than another. It is a matter of perspective – what is terrible for someone could be manageable or even exciting for somebody else.

The one thing that all traumas and losses have in common is that they force change into our lives and sometimes that loss of control or the sense of loss of control is worse than the incident itself.

There is a Yiddish saying (although I think that a lot of other people claim it to be their’s) that goes “Mann traoch, Gott Lauch”– Man plans and God laughs.

I’m not sure if anyone, including God, is laughing at us but the saying rings true because you can have the grandest, most well thought out plans about how your life should be working, and then something comes along and throws those plans right out of the window.

I think that John Lennon said it more accurately when he said that “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” in his song Beautiful Boy.

While we are planning and trying to control our lives, life happens anyway. Whether we are ready for it or not!

Perhaps we would be a lot happier if we responded to any difficulties or challenges with the attitude that we will allow ourselves to mourn our losses. But once we are done mourning and feeling sorry for ourselves, we will bravely take the path that life is forcing us onto.

And we will travel that path with the hope that something wonderful is going to happen somewhere along that journey.

Open up to that something wonderful because as much as you may not believe it right now, you really deserve something wonderful to happen to you!

Like this:

I think that we spend a fortune of our time trying to please people and trying to fit in.
Trying to fit into what?
An imaginary guide line for how you should behave in order for people to accept you or like you or appreciate you. All just in order to gain people’s respect.
What you don’t realise is that often when you work so hard to fit into other’s expectations of you, they don’t respect you. They are more likely to use you or abuse you and then move onto the next sucker.
Yes sucker! You may as well have a tattoo on your forehead telling people that it is easy to use you.
Because the more you give, the more people will take.
So now I’m sure that I’ve just insulted a whole lot of people who believe that giving is more important than receiving.
Yes giving is important, but at what stage do you start giving to yourself? At what stage do you realise that you have to value yourself first?
When you burnout and have nothing left to give?
It is a fine balance – how much should we be giving to ourselves, and how much should we be giving to others?

Let me use a story to illustrate my point. A totally made up story because the day I go hiking… Enough about that. Anyway, let’s pretend that we are going hiking and I am your leader (yeah right!). Off we go hitting the bush trail and suddenly somebody comes to up me and tells me that they left their water at home and could they please have some of mine. Well, I’m a nice person and I don’t want to upset them so I say yes, help yourself and I feel really great when they heap praise on me about how kind and caring I am. We carry on walking and a little while later, somebody else comes up to me and they are thirsty too so I give them some of my water and so it goes. Until I am thirsty and I reach into my bag to get my water bottle and surprise, surprise, it is empty! And if I can be really dramatic (as I love to be) I collapse with dehydration and exhaustion and we are all stuck in the bush!
Do you get the point?
You can give so much that you put yourself in a position of exhaustion and then you are not going to help anyone and you are certainly not going to help yourself.

And on the point of giving. We mistakenly think that it is only worth giving if we can give something big. We want to be like Oprah and say things like “you get a car and you get a car, and you get a car!” Don’t forget the value of simplicity – just giving a smile, just lending a helping hand to a stranger, and most importantly giving a skill that can empower somebody rather than make them dependent on you.

Learn to look after yourself, learn to respect yourself, learn to see your self as important.
And definitely learn to be unique and embrace your individuality.

You are so special, you have so much to offer and you are so, so worth it.
Believe it!

The topping alone is enough to drive you crazy with chocolate desire and this cake was described to me as the shi…. I didn’t know cake could be like that!

(as you will see by the amount of butter that I use, this is not a fat free recipe, but then nothing that I bake is)

Ingredients:

125g butter

1 cup sugar

1tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs, beaten

1 ¼ cup self raising flour

½ cup cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 cup milk

Beat sugar, butter and vanilla essence together until light and fluffy (or your arms get tired)

Beat in the eggs (I love all the beating btw, it gets rid of bad moods)

Sift flour, cocoa powder and bicarb together and fold into the egg/butter mixture alternating with the milk until you have a nice smooth mixture (make sure you lick the spoon to test if the mixture is smooth enough and tastes good)

Pour the mixture into a prepared, greased cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes at 180C/350F

To make the topping:

Put 125 chocolate of your choice (I like dark but experiment at will – chocolate caramel bars work really well as does white chocolate), 60g butter and ¼ cup of thick cream into a saucepan and gently heat while stirring until smooth.

Allow it to cool and then spread over your cake

I like guilding the lily so I add chocolate curls to the top as a final touch!

Share the calm:

Like this:

Let me tell you a story that is a little embarrassing (because of course all of our kids are little angels and you shouldn’t admit that yours isn’t) but I’ll tell it to you anyway.
My younger son is adventurous (read: naughty) and fancies himself as a bit of a Parkour master. So we had these neighbours who had an old broken wall that was not very high and made an ideal challenge for a young boy. He would jump over their wall all of the time. And as an ultimate sign of strength, the boys in the neighbourhood would prove their manliness by giving the wall a kick and watching in joy as they managed to cause some bricks to fall. Hulk has nothing on him.
And what did the wall’s owner do? Every now and then he would just straighten the wall by giving it a bit of a knock and put one or two bricks back up.
And a few days later, the whole process would start all over again. The boys would knock some bricks down, and the wall would be put back together again.
After a while, the house was sold and we watched in fascination (as nosy neighbours tend to do) to see what the new owners would do with that wall.
What they did do? They knocked that useless wall down and dug new foundations and built a huge new, solid wall that my son could not climb in his wildest dreams (well maybe in his dreams where he can climb walls like Sebastien Foucan).

The point of me telling you this story is that we all face walls every day of our lives. Everytime a problem comes up, you try to fix only that problem and the circumstances around the problem rather than getting to the root cause, the foundation of the problem.
So if you have a communication problem in your relationship, you would rather spend ages arguing about whose chance it is to take out the garbage rather than looking at the core issue which is that you have
communication issues!
The main reason we don’t want to deal with the foundation is that it is too scary. We fear change more than we fear being in an unhappy situation.
One of the blessings that stress and depression gives you (yes, seriously) is that it knocks you down to that foundation level.
And you have to start again from that very beginning that everyone else fears. Once you start from the beginning, you can rebuild up your life just like that big strong wall.
Don’t be afraid to do it, you are far, far stronger than you can even imagine!

Like this:

I was watching the amazing pride of Britain awards this week and between tears and laughter, I was so inspired by the people that were on the show. Truthfully, the only reason I wanted to watch it in the beginning was to try to spot Jayne Torvill.
But then very quickly, I became more and more inspired by the stories unfolding in front of me.
The brilliant thing about these people’s stories is that the majority of them have had to overcome huge obstacles in order to become the heroes that they are today.
So I started thinking about why that happens. Why do we wait for tragedy or difficulty before we do anything big?
Why can’t we just do it now? Dream big, and do great things now.
When we have our health and things seem to be working out well for us, then we just settle back into our comfort zones. Not doing anything new, not trying anything exciting, not taking any risks.
Life becomes comfortable until something happens that rocks our foundations and makes us sit up and do something about it.

Hopefully none of you have a life threatening condition, well except for that tricky condition called life but you have experienced hardships in many forms. Some people face hardships and choose to do something amazing with their lives, often helping others while they are doing this. Other people choose to wallow in misery, and choose to remain victims.
Most of you reading this have had to overcome your difficulties which makes it more possible for you to do things that you had never dreamed possible!
Perhaps that is the very reason that we go through difficulties, challenges and downright revolting times. So that we can rise above it.
Don’t wait for change.
Gandhi famously said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world”
Don’t wait for people to make things better, make them better yourself.You can, you will and you do!